The memoirs of Colonel B.V. Nikitin, who was in charge of the counterintelligence of the Petrograd Military District from March to July 1917, were written in exile and are dedicated to one of the most dramatic moments in Russian history. The author describes how, in the chaos that reigned in Petrograd after the February Revolution, with the support of some members of the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolshevik leaders launched an active struggle to seize power. The course of the July uprising provoked by the Bolsheviks is described in detail, which was stopped only by making public counterintelligence data about the pro-German activities of the Bolsheviks, including telegrams that they exchanged with employees of the German agent Parvus.

The text of the book is reproduced from the lifetime edition ( Paris, 1937), in modern spelling. In addition to the memoirs, archival materials from the documents of the Russian military attaché in Denmark S. N. Pototsky, now stored in the Archives of the Hoover Institution (USA), as well as some publications by B. V. Nikitin in the emigrant press are published for the first time.